Month: September 2014

Hysterical Wingnut ‘O the Day

by digby

Somebody needs a valium, stat:

Judge Jeanine Pirro called the Islamic extremist group ISIS America’s “single biggest threat in her 200-year history” claiming that the threat was even bigger than those America faced during World War I, World War II, and September 11th. She predicted that ISIS will come to America, “if not already on American soil.”

Judge Jeanine: “Everything I’ve been telling you for a month is accurate. You need to think September 11th, 2001. You need to remember what it felt like then. Don’t sit there and think that government has you covered. Hell, the White House itself and its perimeter were penetrated twice in the last 24 hours.”

“If our government were listening, our borders would be closed. If our government were listening, we’d be bombing ISIS nonstop. And if they were listening, our president would be following the advice of the military experts united on the issue of boots on the ground. But instead, our president thinks he knows more than the military experts, a disagreement highlighted this week and virtually unseen in American history. And if our government were listening, we would never have gotten out of Iraq the way we did.”

Can somebody tell me where the hell the trillions of dollars in Homeland Security, beefed up FBI, NSA, CIA and local and state police over the past went? Was it one of those Green Zone boondoggles with a bunch of Heritage Foundation idiots letting money run through their fingers like water? Because if it wasn’t we need a major re-evaluation of where this money has been spent. We’ve got a full fledged panic being raised by right wing media in which we are apparently in such imminent danger of being overrun by ISIS terrorists that we have to invade … the middle east, apparently and bomb everything in sight.

God what a bunch of frightened little kids these people are. And to think these people actually think of themselves as the protectors of America. (Now that’s scary …)

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The other massive march scheduled for today

by digby

… didn’t happen. Because threats from bad guys. Supposedly:

An anti-immigration protest group threatening to “shut down all ports of entry” in four southern border states backed out of plans to do so mere hours before the event was scheduled to take place Saturday morning. Lead organizer Stasyi Barth claimed that the protest was cancelled because a cartel was “threatening a blood bath” at the border.

Barth said she was suspicious after receiving multiple social media requests to join the “Shut Down All Ports Of Entry” Facebook page from Sonora, Mexico, and another organizer was allegedly followed and told not to attend. The move comes at a time when militia members have sharply increased their presence along the border in an effort to combat the the influx of children fleeing into the United States, most from Central America.

On its now-changed website, organizers called on Americans to meet at 16 locations in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and California to get “enough people to shut down your desired port” and coordinate stopping their vehicles at ports of entry along the U.S. southern border.

Barth told right-wing site Breitbart that cartels had “people at every port listed… waiting for us, so I was told.” She said, “Cartel threatening mass blood shed. One of the guys in Texas was followed into a Walmart, on the freeway, then approached at his hotel. At the same time, I got a bunch of requests to join the [Facebook] page from Sonora Mexico. I grabbed as many as I could, but realized it was getting out of control fast and I didn’t want them to see who the attendees were. This is after it was requested that we avoid certain areas, because of the recent border threats, unrelated to us. The cartel has people at every port listed..waiting for us, so I was told.”
But even Breitbart was skeptical of the legitimacy of the threat, noting, “While the protest calling for the shut-down of the bridges had a big following on social media, it remains unclear if there were any protesters actually willing to shut down the bridge.”

Also too, a two for one special this week-end on the Very Blueberry Cheesecake Waffullicious Waffle at IHOP.

And anyway I think they’ve misunderstood. The threat was from ISIS not the cartels. (Unless the cartels and ISIS are now working together — which is so very likely considering their common interests. Uh oh …)

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Ferguson reminder

by digby

Local opinion on the shooting:

A whole lot more white people think that than black people. But needless to say, there are a whole lot more white people.

This majority doesn’t believe this because of the media. The media generally took the view that something was very wrong with the shooting and that the police overreacted to the protests. This is just a deeply embedded worldview — that unarmed young black men are dangerous and have to be put down. And they aren’t choosy about who does the putting. They’ll defend George Zimmerman and the police with equal fervor.

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Respecting America’s traditions

by digby

Here is a picture of Native Americans at the climate march today, re-enacting a traditional bow to the God of the Earth and being mocked by right wingers:

#PeopleClimateMarch is #NotACult pic.twitter.com/loz9Xx6Ptr
— Eric (@JustEric) September 21, 2014

Here’s one of the comments:

“You Jesus-freaks are climate deniers!!!!’ –People praying to a cardboard idol to save them from the weather. @SonnyBunch @Matthops82
— Martini Shark (@MartiniShark) September 21, 2014

It’s not the worst that’s out there by a long shot. But it’s fairly typical. And just so depressingly — tribal. (Shhh, don’t tell the Real Americans.)

By the way, I don’t think there was anyone there mocking “Jesus freaks” for being climate deniers.

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Yep. Those refugee kids are ISIS sleeper cells.

by digby

You knew some fatuous moron would come right out and say it, didn’t you? That fatuous moron is Tracy Byrnes Fox news contributor:

“It’s really serious and this has been something that has been bothering me for a while now. We are not taking it serious enough. ISIS is here. I don’t care what anybody says. They’re here. What scares me the most, Brenda, is that they infiltrate the minds of children and when children cross the border everyone, you know, the tears start coming down. We want to take care of them, but so many of these kids are trained to hate us and potentially kill us. And yet we are just letting them in, welcoming them with open arms, paying for their medical, paying for everything and it’s just going to come back to bite us.”

Golly, it sure sounds like she thinks we need to “bring them to justice” doesn’t it? After all “these kids are trained to hate us a potentially kill us.” And you know what that means…

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Oh fergawdsakes

by digby

The question is do the soccer moms eat chicken and NASCAR dads drink coffee? At the same time? Only our punditocracy can sort it out for us and tell us what it all means:

“Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd on Sunday described the 2014 midterm elections as a battle between “Starbucks nation” and “Chick-Fil-A country.”

He split the U.S. into the Democratic urban areas that drink Starbucks and the Republican rural areas that eat Chick-Fil-A.

According to Todd, there are a few Senate seats up for grabs in Chick-Fil-A-loving states like Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, giving Republicans the advantage. And he said that the major battlegrounds are Colorado and Iowa.

He said that Democrats will need to deploy major get-out-the-vote efforts in urban centers. Perhaps at Starbucks?

Wait. I thought we’d decided that it was Cracker Barrel country and Le Pain Quotidien nation. Or was it the Biscuitville empire vs the Tender Greens tribe? It’s so hard to keep up. Thank goodness we still have such important insights Meet the Press so we can understand the political complexities of this great land of ours.

A funny kind of hero

by digby

A fascinating short interview with George Zimmerman:

In his first interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Zimmerman described life after his acquittal last year in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The former Neighborhood Watch volunteer shot the unarmed black teen in Sanford on Feb. 26, 2012.

Now life for the 30-year-old is completely different.

He’s always moving.

He’s in debt.

And he’s constantly receiving death threats.

“I just try to be smart where I go,” said Zimmerman, who described the gun show at Gander Mountain Academy as a “friendly” event that didn’t warrant extra protection.

Zimmerman said he carries a semi-automatic handgun for added safety.

“It’s part of life,” said Zimmerman, whose Twitter feed is a constant barrage of death threats. “It’s unfortunately necessary right now.”[…]

He said he’s been described by strangers as soft-spoken and even kind. He also frequently receives invitations to parties and barbecues from strangers and will go if he’s in town.

But Zimmerman still often finds himself embroiled in controversy. About a week ago, a driver called Lake Mary police accusing Zimmerman of threatening to shoot him during a road-rage incident. The driver didn’t press charges, so Zimmerman was not arrested.

He’s also travelling the country making speeches. One presumes they aren’t being delivered to the rotary club.

He’s a genuine right wing hero. Which is really disturbing. After all, even if one agrees with the verdict and buy that he thought he was acting in self-defense, he still killed an unarmed 17 year old kid. That just doesn’t seem like something anyone should be proud of — or celebrate, regardless of the circumstances. There’s something really quite sick about it, particularly with his history of domestic violence and frequent confrontations with other members of the public.

It’s also interesting that like George W. Bush and some other controversial historical figures, Zimmerman is an artist — only he’s very explicitly political:

He recently launched a website to give himself a platform to speak freely. One of his posts discusses a series of portraits he has painted honoring the four Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya.

Zimmerman said he plans to give the original paintings to the families of the four people killed but will sell replicas and donate all the funds to various wounded veterans’ organizations.

Zimmerman painted the portraits so the names of the victims killed wouldn’t go unknown. He shared that sentiment on his site’s first post Sept. 17: “I cannot fathom an America where the name of Tyrone Woods is not as well known as mine. It makes a difference, a tremendous one.”

The post was signed “Your Friend, George M. Zimmerman.”

What does he mean by “it makes a difference, a tremendous one”? Is he saying that his notoriety is “making a difference”? What kind of difference?

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Everybody knows about the People’s Climate March in NYC right?


by digby

It’s big.

Huffington Post has a live blog with pics.
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But not a drop to drink?
by Tom Sullivan

As the People’s Climate March begins in New York later today, California struggles with record drought. It’s not just the hippies worried about climate change, and not just here.

The UK must prepare for “the worst droughts in modern times” experts will warn this week at a major international conference to discuss the growing global water crisis.

Britain is looking at ways of reconfiguring its water infrastructure — expanding reservoirs, imposing tougher water extraction licenses, considering more desalination plants. “In the past we have planned for our water resources to cope with the worst situation on record but records are only 100 years long,” explains Trevor Bishop, the Environment Agency’s deputy director. “We may get a situation that is worse than that – with climate change that is perfectly possible.”

From Papua New Guinea to London, marchers bear witness to the threat.

Meanwhile in the boardrooms, scarcity for the many means opportunity for a select few. Some of those circling vultures aren’t birds.

Privatizing water supplies is a growth industry. Whether it’s American Water, Aqua America, Suez, Veolia Water, or Nestle, private water companies are competing to lock up water resources and public water systems. If not for you, for the fracking industry. As with charter schools and vouchers in public education, public-private partnerships are one of business’ favorite tactics for getting this particular camel’s nose under the tent.

When Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s emergency manager took charge in Detroit this year, it was no accident that the first public infrastructure up for sale was its water and sewer system. They began by shutting off water to thousands of poor residents behind on their bills. Local activist Maureen Taylor told the Netroots Nation conference in July [timestamp 1:08:45], “This monstrous thing that’s going on in Detroit … beyond demonic … You gotta leave here changed! … Water is a human right.”

But with the metastasized capitalism Naomi Klein describes, we’re dealing with people who would sell you the air you breathe if they could control how it gets to your nose. And if you cannot afford to buy their air, well, you should have worked harder, planned better, and saved more.

Saturday Night at the Movies

Days of wine and neuroses: My Old Lady & A Master Builder


By Dennis Hartley

Drunken boor: My Old Lady

Joy and Pane: A Master Builder